[EXPRESSO] Hope (2026) | In The Sleepy Little Town Of

Na Hong-jin (The Yellow Sea, The Chaser, The Wailing) is back with Hope, a massive action monster film that it’s actually best enjoyed by going to see it while knowing as little as possible about it, but it easy enough to keep spoiler free and the premise is actually fairly simple.

In the small village of Hope Harbour (situated nearby the Korean Demilitarized Zone), the police chief and his rookie deputy find themselves having to fend off a mysterious creature that has brutalized the livestock, is actively destroying the village and its people, while a hunting party in the woods find themselves stalked….

It doesn’t sound like much, yet there is more to it, as this is basically both a tribute and a mockery of the american action film, taking inspiration from Bong Joon-Ho’s The Host but also being somewhere tribute and parody of the 50s b-movie creature feature (there even the bumbling sheriff protagonist equivalent), with the characters being both cartoonish yet relatable in their incompetence, the director able to switch the tone on the fly and make the comedic bit not feel dissonant, to make intense action scenes Hollywood style then kinda “spoof” them at the same time.

It’s incredibly captivating and its turns more towards sci-fi, but as impressive as it is how it can handle multiple tones, how it builds to reveal not only the real scope and the stakes, but also how it actually manages to make its 2 hours and 40 minutes runtime a relative breeze, there’s always something happening, the action is incredible, and you always want more of everything.

My only gripe is that the CG for creatures can be underwhelming at times, but even with this, i highly recommend what is now one of the best films i’ve seen all years.

[EXPRESSO] Puella Magi Madoka Magica Walpurgisnacht Rising (2026) | ♫ ..in the back of my Dragula ♫

It has literally been 13 years, but after it finally released in Japanese theathers this late August, the fourth Puella Magi Madoka Magica film, Walpurghisnacth Rising, it’s here.

And by “here” i mean i managed to see its special preview screening at this year’s Lucca Comics & Games (one of the biggest Italian anime-nerd-geek conventions), this one somehow i managed to, unlike the one for Godzilla Minus Zero.

I’m gonna try to keep things as spoiler free as possible, despite this being the 4^th film in the series.

After the twist ending of Rebellion, the new status quo created by Homura, now “recruiting” random girls into becoming magical girls via the Lizard Phone, is menaced by some unknown new enemy related to the entity of Walpurgisnacht, forcing the magical girls to even build fragile alliances with Homura, as she confronts specters of a past that shouldn’t exist.

Despite this never being touted as the final film in the Madoka Magica series, i can see why one might think so… but it’s so fuckin not, let’s just put it that way.

And frankly i do not mind one bit because it’s good, very damn good, the animation is astounding as ever, the new characters are fun, the narrative engrossing, keeping you intrigued with an increasingly twisted world, lots of action, incredible visuals, revelations and twists, yet you don’t really notice how this is the biggest Madoka Magica movie in runtime too… mostly.

I still say it’s pretty dang good, loved it, the ending and resolution feels quite satisfying in itself, but its also a case of answering many questions only to raise many new ones since there are new concepts, new characters, the lore builds and expands, also to tease a new film, hopefully one we get to see before 2050.

Platformation Time Again #11: Croc 2 PS1 | GBC

HISTORY

In a way, it’s no surprise that Croc got a sequel, as in the manual of the first game it had a “Croc II” logo and a Christmas 1998 release…. which it didn’t meet, instead releasing in summer of 1999, but make no mistake that Fox Interactive was indeed banking a lot on Croc, as just the PS1 version of Legend Of The Gobbos sold 3 milions, and was Argonaut’s most profitable title.

They were banking on it so such that in America the game was part of a cross-promotion with Nabisco, a candy company, and its Life Savers line, which in the US version replaced jelly bounce pad items, alongside 6,5 millions of wrappers with the Croc 2 logo, and Fox Interactive indeed spent a lot in advertising the game, as it included regular print ads, the aforementioned in-game product placement, and even a sweepstakes that had prizes like Playstation consoles but mostly a family trip to Australia…. dunno why Australia, of all places.

Can’t say i’ve ever seen those candies ever in my life here, and i assume they weren’t sold in Europe as a whole either because they don’t appear in the PS1 PAL version, nor i recall them having a similar marketing campaign here, just the regular magazine ads and some TV spots, maybe

Again, for clarification, i’m using my own PS1 copy of the game i bought more than a decade ago to base the review on, but while we now know the remaster is releasing the 29th of October, as in today, at the time of writing they didn’t gave out any real date (just late 2026), so i’ll just do an EXTEND review for the remastered… eventually.

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[EXPRESSO] Wildwood (2026) | The Cracked Brass Bells Will Ring

I was more than ready to see Laika newest film, i wanted to since the trailer was out, i was gonna support them anyway as they’re one of the very few good things to come out of nepo babies using decadent amounts of money for the actual arts, keeping stop motion animation alive still, even if we already know these movies are never making back the budget.

But frankly i was honestly surprised by Wildwood, like, damn, even putting aside how this one has been in development for 15 years and it shows, it’s absolutely stunning to look at.

Set in Portland, the plot sees a 13yo girl, Prue, left to attend his baby brother Mac at home, but she doesn’t listen, brings him alongside in a cart, meets her nerdy classmate Curtis, and has her brother snatched by a pack of crows, so the two chase to the mist shrouded Forbidden Forest where she got told to never ever go, found a mysterious way in, entering a world full of magic, talking animals and factions that were on the verge of war, getting caught up in this against her will.

It’s remarkable not only how this looks even better and is pure delight for eye of the stop motion aficionados (even by Laika’s own high standards), but how the apparently generic “fantasy forest fable” theming is used to develop an interesting world, with the everything from infantry wolves, talking owls, barbarians and the main antagonist, the forest witch, which is an excellent tragic villain, matched by some really likeable and well rounded protagonists and secondary characters alike.

There’s no dead air, all the way through its + 2 hours runtime, it’s also surprisingly funny, witty and willing to be “brutal”, avoiding easy kids films’ cop-outs.

PLEASE, just go see it.

4 Volumes Into Gachiakuta [FIRST IMPRESSIONS]

This isn’t a review (i’m working on something like that, though), and i’m fairly sure i’m late to the party, but since i’m not watching the anime, yet i have decided to give the Gachiakuta manga a try, since i did like the look, the theme, i’m a bit of a trash boy myself (i do review a lot of trash, by choice) and apparently editors/publisher are REALLY pushing it to be the next big shonen series that becomes huge (on terms of other popular series having ended in recent years)…… let’s do a “vibe check”.

Again, it’s a bit early for a proper review, but it is a modern shonen, 4 volumes i think it’s a fair enough chunk to base these impressions on, i could have stopped at volume 3, but i decided to give the series a bit more leeway.

And yes, i’m a bit late to the party, but who cares.

(as a side note, one of the variants for the Italian release of the first volume had a literal “trashbox”, that’s cute)

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PO’ED: Definitive Edition PS4 [REVIEW] | Mein Soufflè!

I have played a few FPS in my days, not too many, but sure as hell i never played PO’ED, never even heard of the frigging thing until the AVGN episode about the 3DO, to be honest, as i never knew anyone growing up that had that thing (which i assume is the case for almost everyone else), and i never even stumbled upon the PS1 port.

So i was curious, realized that Nightdive did actually do a remaster in their KEX engine for this oscure mid 90s FPS, and i got during a PSN sale.

It just called to me, as the forgotten weird ass FPS where you play as a chef and use frying pan to kill alien ass monsters, i knew i had to play it.

The story is all explained in a letter text dump where the protagonist, a chef named Ox, writes to his mum how that sweet paying gig on a spaceship …didn’t go as planned, as aliens infiltrated the ship, killed all the mercs, so he’ll have to take on some fresh meat.

And he’s indeed – title drop – Pissed Off, as he writes in the few text scrolls/letters.

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Slotherhouse (2023) [REVIEW] | Slay Queen

While i’m sure i can find more old 80s school themed/adjacent slasher, this September we’re doing something a bit more recent for a change, from a chronological standpoint, by unearthing from my Blu-Ray collection 2023’s Slotherhouse.

And yes, indeed, this is a 10/10 title for you killer animal slasher film.

It really is indeed about a killer sloth, and the house is not any common house, it’s a sorority house, where Emily Young, a college student brings a three-toed sloth from the jungle, thinking it can work as a “house mascot” and hence help her be elected as the sorority’s president.

But of course things go awry as a series of sorority girls is being killed, and all the evidence strongly implicates it’s actually the cute sloth the one doing all the murders…

I’ll be honest, the promo material made it look like it was chomping off the modern “retro 80s trend”, specifically aping Happy Death Day…. but i was mistaken, this isn’t the case, as Slotherhouse – aside taking place in modern times – is oddly not even that much interested in aping other slasher films. Not too specifically, anyway.

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Platformation Time Again update plans

I have more updates about the blog to share in the future, but let’s start with something i can confirm right now.

Platformation Time Again not only will keep going as usual (if I could i would make it even more recurring of a rubric), but alongside the EXTEND addendums, a will be dedicating a sub-rubric to collections, compilations, and so on, especially due these are becoming more and more widespread as the industry is really scraping about everything in their back catalogue, and platformers (alongside beat em ups) are a big part of this surge of “new money for old rope”.

Specific rules are being written as of now, but it’s 100 % a thing that will happen regardless.

A couple new EXPRESSO reviews will arrive very soon, in the meantime, and you can read my review of the recently released Heart Of The Beast of you so desire.

See ya.

Platformation Time Again #10: Donkey Kong 64 N64 | NSWITCH/NSWITCH2

HISTORY

I don’t think i need to explain who Donkey Kong is, heck, you wouldn’t need to do so even back in 1999, as the reboot of the series by british developer Rareware proved to be incredibly successful, reinvigorating DK for a new generation by updating it, and other phrases i’m probably gonna repeat when i eventually tackle the Country games, so i’m just stopping myself here.

Plus its not like DK became this niche Nintendo franchise fans spend years begging for a sequel that they most likely ain’t gonna get.

But for today, let’s pretend we don’t know what Bananza is, or even what Conker’s N64 game would turn out to be, for that matter.

After wrapping up the SNES trilogy of DK games with Donkey Kong Country 3: Dixie’s Double Trouble in late 1996, a team of Rare employees were put to work on a Donkey Kong game for the N64….allegedly it was intended to launch for the then new N64DD add-on but most likely it was an idea by producers that quickly died when the add-on sales were shown to be exactly as low as they were expecting, after years of delays to debut into a market where the Compact Disc was indeed becoming the new norm and making cartridges obsolete.

Curiously it wasn’t even intended as a full 3D platformer, but instead as 2.5D platformer more in line with the Country series , though this version spend 18 months in developments, was ultimately scrapped (if anything of that version survives to this day, it’s being held secret by either old Rare and-or Nintendo staff, there’s no images of it circulating at the time of posting,), a lot of people that worked on Banjo Kazooie were brought in, and the game was reworked into being a typical 3D collectathon platformer in the vein of BK and it’s sequel, Banjo Tooie.

There’s a bit more to the production history of Donkey Kong 64, but it was mostly Rare doing their thing as usual by then, there’s no major scandal, but i would be a fool not talk about about how Nintendo staff checked-in to see the game early on, leading to a terrified Shigeru Miyamoto seeing DK given a realistic double barreled shotgun (producing realistic gun sounds) as a weapon to shoot cartoon beavers with, only for him to quickly sketch up a less alarming, more child friendly and less problematic weaponry, adding leaf branches, a more wooden design, the now iconic “coconut gun”, which was immediatly implemented in the game.

All of this just because the realistic gun was a placeholder Rare absent mindedly left in.

For reference, this review is based on both my old playthrough of DK 64 on original N64 hardware and a fresh run of the version released via the N64 Classics app/service on Switch 2 (as all N64 games, it can run on the old Switch 1 consoles as well).

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[EXPRESSO] Jo Jo Bizarre Adventure: Golden Spirit iOS | The Gachalands

Probably comes as no surprise to anybody that Golden Spirit is another pile of gacha shit… but still, i decided to give this one a try.

Mostly because i haven’t played one of these in a while and because it’s Jojo…. and starting off, gameplay it’s not exactly what i figured it would be from the trailers, and by that i mean it was sold as a “ tactical RPG”, which to me means a Tactics style turn based affair, this is actually a real time autobattler where the more pressing issue is positioning the units, so yeah, it’s another idle self playing borefest, the strategic hook of the Rush mechanic meaning very little, and of course the roster is infested with VERY minor characters, so you can gamble for the ones you really want.

Or hope you can unlock them in event story cutscenes…. some of which even when available will wall off content with 14 hours timers, like the Stardust Crusaders one, because the game starts off with Part 5, Golden Wind, the Jo Jo series taking place in Neaples, Italy and following Giorno Giovanna, the son of Dio Brando, as he fights to overthrow the mafia’s mysterious boss.

Hope you already know everything JoJo because the game never really explains shit, despite starting from Part 5….of 9.

While it mostly looks quite decent, it goes the extra mile of not just reusing frames from the anime for the story scenes (alongside recreating them in various styles), fairly common in itself, but sometimes passing those through an IA filter, making them look worse upon any scrutiny, too.

Its so utterly generic that you could have EASILY slapped another anime license/skin unto it… and i’ll just say it looks identical to a bootleg Jujutsu Kaisen mobile game, Jujutsu Malevolent Shrine.